: Pressure-Cooked Turkey Reconsiders US Troops On Its Soil

If anyone wants a textbook example of how complicated the political web is in the Middle East – and how principles like democracy and freedom are lost among the backroom shuffling – the recent vote by the Turkish parliament rejecting the stationing of US troops along the Turkey-Iraq border is a good one. On one hand, you could argue that the vote represents the triumph of democracy, where the will of the people (over 90% of Turks oppose the troop deployment) is properly reflected in their elected legislature. On the other hand, if Turkey had approved the troop deployment, one of their conditions was to be given a free hand to station their own troops in northern Iraq, where they would act to prevent the de-facto independent Kurdish state that exists there (with US protection) from emerging as a real one. The Turks passed up a pretty sweet deal, with up to $30 billion in cash and prizes to help it weather the storm (the Israelis, adept as they are at milking Congress, will be lucky to get a few billion at most). It is this financial carrot that is prompting the head of the Justice and Development Party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the behind-the-scenes ruler of Turkey) and Prime Seat-Warmer Abdullah Gul, to push their party to reconsider the vote after watching the Turkish stock market plunge in the wake of the first one. There’s not much time for another vote, as US military planners are mulling a one-front strategy and beginning plans to route soldiers and supplies currently floating off the Turkish shore back towards Kuwait.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.